Two years seems like such a short amount of time. It feels such an eternity, Ariadne, that we’ve had you with us. It’s hard to remember what life was like before you came along – I know your papa and I had many long years together, before you, and that two years is only a drop in the hat of time we are all going to have together. But I have to keep pinching myself, thinking, has it been two years since my little baby was born, already? And then in the next moment, has it only been two years? Hasn’t it been a century of our little family, together?

A year ago, back when I was filled with New Mom Woe at the idea of my little baby turning a year old, not so baby anymore, growing, grown, practically a teenager already, college on the horizon – your aunties Emi and Lizzie told me, oh, but that one-year old age is such a fun age. It’s so great. They’re like little monkeys, they can play and explore but they still need mama, they’re still babies.

At the time, I didn’t believe them, or I didn’t want to believe them. I knew every age with you would be precious, unique in its own ways – but that baby stage is so magical. It’s so hard to let go of. It’s why we keep having babies, to try and reclaim that sweetness and that innocence and that magic, just one more time. I didn’t believe toddlerhood could be as magical as babydom – but it has been. Emi and Lizzie, of course, have been so right. One-into-two years old has been such a blessing and a joy with you, my darling.

You are my little monkey girl, my little angel babe, my faerie mae. You are my goblin child, you are all sweetness and light. You are absolutely my bestest best friend, and I delight in our time together. Since you were born, you have given me this drive – this personal urging to be better and do better, and lately, that driven has manifested itself as a pull to be present. To see the world with wonder, as your eyes do – or to at least be open to it. To be as delighted watching Coco for the fortieth time, like you are – even if, from my perspective, I’m just delighted to be holding your plump little body, warm and fresh from the bath, your candy floss, baby-bird-wing-soft blonde hair still damp and drying in long strands down your back.

Thank you for all you have taught me, in the past two years. Thank you for reminding me that the Now is where we are meant to live, and not in the regrets of the Past, and not in the worries of the Future. Thank you for reminding me to slow down, that having a routine is good — but it’s not necessary to force ourselves to stick so strictly to a schedule. Thank you for refreshing my world view — for reminding me how magical it is to see new things. Thank you for helping me appreciate the sky and choo-choo trains and the feel of grass under our feet and the wind in our hair. Thank you for making me see lovely things about my own self — because I see the same things and admire them in you. Thank you for teaching me to love myself radically, even when that seems like the absolute hardest thing to do — because I want you to grow up loving yourself, and never be plagued with the self-doubt and body hate that troubles me and so many of my lady friends. Thank you for making me strong — thank you for being the reason I’m learning to make harder decisions, push to create boundaries or change situations. Thank you for being the reason I am trying to learn to be a fighter — so I can stand up for you, for us, for anyone vulnerable — and teach you to do the same. Thank you, above all, for the sweet love you bring to my daily life — thank you for the kisses, and the way you grasp my shirt like you cannot be parted from me, the way you light up and do a little dance-dance when you see me for the first time after a long time away. Thank you for needing me — at least right now, at this young age — as desperately as I need you. Thank you for the healing you have brought me, thank you for the peace I feel in my soul when I hold you in those quiet evenings.

I told myself I wouldn’t have to write another letter to you until your second birthday. That seemed like a relief, at first—sometimes I am amazed at myself, managing to write a letter each month of your first year. I’m glad I did, it was worth the effort – already, once or twice, I have enjoyed going back and rereading, reminding myself what life with you was like at two months, at six, at nine. You have changed so quickly, the weeks and months fly by – and it’s nice to remember days when we just cuddled, or you sat still(!!) in my lap. But still – finding the time each month was difficult, making the effort to pull together words and phrases that remotely captured what it’s like to be your mom. I felt relieved to think I’d cut it down to once a year, a letter for each birthday.

And here we are – I’m writing you an 18 month, year-and-a-half letter.

I can’t help it! You, my darling Ari, are too fun and too silly and too loving and too precious not to take a few minutes to try and capture what life with you is like, right now. You’ve changed so much from 12 months, a year old – already, only 6 months later, I look at pictures of you from your first birthday, and think, she’s so little, her hair is so short compared to now, she’s changed so much, already!

I think I had feared, like most first-time moms, that moving out of that baby stage and into the toddler phase would mean losing some of the specialness of our bond. Having a baby is so soft and sweet and lovely – sure, messy as well, sleepless often, stressful, definitely – but cuddling your baby, knowing you the mama are the thing a baby needs most – it makes mamas feel so special and so unique and so needed, so necessary. The older you get, the more superfluous I will become, it seemed like – the less you will physically need me, maybe the less you might need me, period. It’s a silly worry, I know – I am thirty-nearly-thirty-one years old, and I still need my mama, all the time. But you are so precious to me, I always want to be your best friend.

But happily – so happily – this second year has begun so wonderfully, and has been just as fulfilling, emotionally and spiritually, as your first. Friends had told me one-year-olds are a delightful mix of baby and child, and it’s so true. You have your toddler moments, sure, you’ve learned to arch your back and go limp everywhere except your kicking little feet, you whine when you don’t immediately get your way – but for the most part, you are such a happy, joyful little girl. Every day with you is so entertaining and funny and tender and sweet.

At 18 months, you are brimming with personality. You’ve learned people think you’re funny, or cute, and you like to ham it up. You give Sylvie Ann so many kisses, and then grin at the adults. See how sweet I am? You have this bashful little grin, and you duck your head into my shoulder if I’m holding you, or press yourself into my legs if you’re standing near me. Shy, sometimes – but so sweet when you are. And among friends, family – you are a firecracker. You crawl in your little shark tent at Marmee’s and hide, and shriek when you’re spotted. You chase Ziggy and Kitty and Alice Kitty and Big Kitty Boi, out of an earnest desire to love them, pet them, play with them! You’ve followed Alice and Big Kitty Boi all over Marmee’s yard, chirruping and singing to them, trying to get close enough to touch.

It’s late, admittedly. Very late – the tardiest of all your monthly birthday letters since you’ve been born. I could list of a variety of excuses, our busy schedules, the lack of free time to let go and just write – but the truth is, I’ve had a hard time sitting down to write this last of your letters from your first year.

I had an opportunity here and there to open up a blank document and type, to at least start writing and figure out where to go as I went along. Once or twice, I swore I had the angle, the message figured out, and I just needed to sit down and let the words spill out. But I haven’t, until now, and the reason is, mostly – I’m not certain what all to say.

Or rather, perhaps – I’m not certain I can fit the wealth of emotions I feel at your one year birthday into just one single letter. How do I cram the longest, shortest, most challenging, most emotional, most taxing, most rewarding year into one digestible letter?

I thought about this often, in the evenings. As I got you ready for bed and sat with you in your rocking chair, I tended to think about this letter and what I’d like to say to you to celebrate your birthday. I find it hard not to get reflective, in the evenings, when your day is winding down. I sit with you in my lap, in our rocker, and you have some milk, and then we nurse, and your eyes start to get heavy, your blinks longer. Your free hand scrabbles for my hair, my shirt, my necklace, whatever you can reach to anchor you as you slip towards dreamland. The light from your windows fades from deep amber to blue-ish, and shadows pass across the rug.

I would sit, and we would rock, and I had to think about how many hundreds of bedtimes we have done together before, and how many more to come. I would think about the many ways that bedtime has changed, for us. When we first came home from the birth center, we all pretty much lived out of the den. I found getting out of bed in the middle of the night difficult, at first, and so I slept on the couch, back on the days of those three hour stretches, easier to get up and rejoin the real world from my exhausted sleep. And then you were sleeping in your cosleeper, then the canopy of your pack-n-play. There were all the many, many nights your papa and I bounced you to sleep, all the many, many nights I nursed you to sleep – waiting, and waiting, and urging myself to be patient and not rush you to fall completely and deeply asleep so I might set you down. I remember all those little transitions, trusting you first to sleep not in one of our arms, but in a cosleeper or a pack-n-play – then to sleep alone in your nursery – then that bigger transition to crib.

My darling, you are eleven-months old – you’re still my little baby, but you’re on the cusp of becoming a big one-year-old girl, my little toddler. Every day, it seems you are more and more a little girl, and a little tiny bit less a baby. It is, as this journey has been the entire time, both lovely and heartbreaking to watch.

At eleven months, you are a fiery little girl, full of personality. You have been particular and sensitive since the day you were born, and that hasn’t changed a bit. You want things – clothes, food, activities, comfort – to be just so, and anything less is unacceptable. I remind myself this will be a good quality to have, when you’re older, picking out dates or clothes or jobs or colleges. Right now – it’s a little exhausting. You are so sensitive, so easily touched by the people and energies, the sounds and smells around you. All I can do is grin, a little chagrined, and say, I wonder where on earth she got that from?!

You are very clever, finding loopholes to the boundaries Papa and I create for you, mimicking our actions and sounds, and grinning with pleasure when you succeed. You are cheerful, for the most part – I swear, I don’t know any other baby who laughs as often and with such gusto as you do. You delight in being delighted. You laugh, and then you give a little grin, a little check-in glance to Papa or me, that was funny, wasn’t it? I’M funny.

About a month and a half ago, you and I were at our friends the Hensels’ new house. You and I drove out to see it for the first time — you cried the whole way. I got maybe 15 minutes of fart noises and coos, and then that devolved into 20 minutes of irritated-at-still-being-in-the-carseat cry.

But — we wound down a long country road, pulled in, you calmed. Smiled at everyone, waved. We settled in for a long visit where you played with (erm near) Norah in the floor. She made up stories with your toys, she had a princess who was baking strawberry pies for you and me to sample. We ate haphazardly in that way only friends-who’ve-become-family can — sprawled out here, there, everywhere.

Man, I really love this age, your Uncle Travis said, somewhere around nine or ten months, suddenly, it’s like they’re a little person, and they can interact with you and you can figure out how to make them happy.

Nope, I said, shaking my head. Disagree. This age has been really hard for me.